


The Monster's House

by aravenwood



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demons, Gen, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 21:50:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16542932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood
Summary: "This house, as far as anyone knows, is just a house built in the middle of a forest with spirits and, it’s believed, demons claiming it for their own.”Ryan and Shane visit a haunted house in the middle of nowhere.





	The Monster's House

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So, this show has very quickly become my new obsession to the extent that I couldn't get the idea of writing a fic for these guys out of my head. So that's exactly what I did. It also happily coincided with the release of the most recent monthly whump challenge prompts. This fic was written for the image prompt - a house in a forest which just screamed for a horror fic. 
> 
> Also, thanks goes to my good friend Pan, who encouraged me to post this when I was nervous!
> 
> Just a very quick note also that there's a character who's just called "camera operator" - this is just because I don't know anything about the rest of the crew and so decided to just have an unnamed cameraman. 
> 
> I think that's all. I hope you enjoy it!

“So this house is a little different from others that we’ve investigated in that we actually know nothing about the history. We don’t know if anyone died here, we don’t know if it’s built on the sight of some battle or burial ground. This house, as far as anyone knows, is just a house built in the middle of a forest with spirits and, it’s believed, demons claiming it for their own.”

Shane struggled to keep the smile from his face as he listened to Ryan’s introduction. He knew that if he turned around and even glanced at the other man, he would lose it and they would have to do another take and it didn’t feel nearly as authentic if they did that. So instead he looked at the house and its murky windows and rotten porch. It was the kind of house that he could imagine little kids daring themselves to venture into on Hallowe’en, armed with a Ouija board and flashlights. He imagined them flinching at every creak, hiding to scare each other and ultimately running away after one too many strange noises. He imagined Ryan doing the same thing several hours from now.

“There have been numerous accounts of apparent ghost sightings both inside and out. Faces in the window, voices threatening anyone who dares step foot inside. There have even been reports of faces appearing in the flames if you light a fire in the fireplace.”

“Spooky,” Shane commented easily, jamming his hands in his pockets and rocking on his heels, all the while raising his eyebrows at the camera and smirking.

Ryan turned to him. “Fuck yeah it’s spooky. Can you imagine seeing something like that?” he said with wide eyes and a smile of his own.

Shane shrugged. “Hey, didn’t that happen in Harry Potter? Are they freaking out over the floo network?”

Ryan barked out a laugh. “Oh yeah, they freaked out because they saw Sirius Black’s floating head in the flames. That’s exactly what happened,” he grinned and rolled his eyes. “You’ve got to admit, this place has one hell of an atmosphere. I mean, just look at it!”

“Yeah, sure. There’s an atmosphere alright. Like I said, spooky. Should we head inside?”

The two of them climbed the half-rotten steps onto the front porch, Ryan examining the exterior of the house with narrowed, fearful eyes while Shane followed behind him, his expression one of complete and utter indifference.

“So what else do you need to worry about with this place?” Shane asked as they paused just outside the front door. He reached for the door handle but pulled back as a sudden burst of cold wracked his body. “Fuck, it’s cold out here,” he muttered and tucked his hands beneath his armpits, hunching his shoulders and shivering.

Ryan glanced at him. “Stop being a baby, the weather’s fine. You’re just trying to get me inside faster, aren’t you? To answer your question, yes there actually is more _we_ need to worry about. Some people have reported actually being attacked by spirits. They’ve found scratches or bruises and in one case, an investigator swore he was being choked by an entity.” His hand drifted to his neck and he squeezed it tentatively, like he was afraid of what he would find there. As usual, he was already spooked.

“Kinky,” Shane commented and once more reached for the handle. Another wave of cold washed over him but this time he didn’t pull back but instead forced himself to continue. He wrapped his hand around the handle – it was so icy cold beneath his palm that was like tiny needles were stabbing him –, took a deep breath and twisted it. The door swung open with a quick push and he took a step back to let Ryan and the camera see inside, ignoring the strange twisting sensation in his stomach which was quickly growing uncomfortable.

As Ryan took a step closer to the open door, Shane had the strange urge to drag him backwards and away from this place. He couldn’t explain it, but there was a voice in his head screaming “no!” over and over again, and his entire body was begging to obey. It was strange and a little frightening, and he’d never felt like this before.

“Well, after you,” Ryan said after a few moments of silence. It was his turn to step back now, and as he did it was like a weight was lifted from Shane’s chest. Get back, everyone get back, his mind was shouting but he stepped forwards anyway, lifted one foot over the threshold into the house, then the other. He walked forwards a few steps and turned to watch Ryan join him.

Instead he turned just in time to see the door slam shut.

Fuck. “Very funny, Ryan. You think that’s gonna spook me? Get in here, already!” he shouted and headed back to the door, twisting the handle and pulling on the door. It didn’t budge. He sighed. “Really, this is what we’re doing? Fine, I don’t care! Stay out there as long as you want but remember, it’s gonna get dark out there and do you really want to be stuck out there after what you were talking about? It’s gonna freak you out more than it’s gonna get me!”

There was no reply, not even an answering chuckle. He crossed his arms over his chest and took a couple of steps back from the door, waiting patiently for Ryan to realise that the joke hadn’t worked and that there was no point in trying to scare him because he didn’t believe in any of this shit anyway. This was just a house to him, a hell of a lot less than what it was to Ryan.

After a few minutes of nothing happening, Shane let out a long-suffering sigh, complete with a dramatic heave of his shoulders, and plucked the camera from its harness against his chest. “Seems like someone’s decided to start the lock-in early. Or he’s just too afraid to come in here, Place your bets on which it is,” he said to the camera, then spun it around to get a good look at the room he was in.

It looked just as Shane had imagined when he’d first landed eyes upon the outside. There were three comfortable-looking chairs in one corner, facing a television set that had to be from the 1980s. The wallpaper, presumably once bright and vibrant, was damp and peeling, leaving an unpleasant stench throughout the room. On a side table between two of the chairs he found a worn photograph in a brass frame. It was of a man and a woman; a couple, Shane guessed from the possessive grip the man had around the woman. The man was big and broad shouldered, much of his face covered by a thick beard and broad eyebrows. His eyes were dark and there was something within them that Shane didn’t like, something that made a lump rise in his throat. The woman was his opposite in every way; her hair, long and soft and light, curtained her face and hid much of her expression from the camera. She was smiling, he could see that much, but her eyes said something else. They looked sad, the kind of sadness that was bone deep and never quite disappeared. Ryan would be all over that.

But there was something else in that photo, something that Shane only noticed as he was about to turn away. Between the heads of the couple there was what appeared to be a shadow. It wasn’t as broad-shouldered as the man, not as slim as the woman. This was someone else. The photographer, Shane guessed. He leaned in with the camera and forced himself to laugh, even when he wanted to do anything but laugh. “So this is the woman Ryan will say haunts this place, right? Ever feel like he’s a little too predictable?”

As he straightened up, a short burst of warm air hit his neck.

“What the fuck?” he whispered and backed up a couple of steps as he lifted a hand to rub the warm spot on his neck. The rest of his body was still so cold, and yet that had almost felt like someone breathing down his neck – no, not a breath, there was warm air coming from somewhere. That had to be it.

Fuck, Ryan was starting to rub off on him. He closed his eyes and shook his head to clear his mind from all of those stupid, paranoid, ridiculous thoughts. There was nothing to be afraid of, this was just a house. A creepy house that was clearly abandoned and had been for a long time, but just a house nonetheless. He took a few deep breaths before he opened his eyes, then lifted the camera up to his face. “This place is dusty as hell, it keeps going up my nose.” Then he raised his voice. “This is your doing, Ryan! It’s your fault I’ve got dust up my nose!”

Upon receiving no response he lowered the camera and made his way over to the front window, peeled the curtains back and squinted through glass stained brown with layer upon layer of filth. He could just barely make out Ryan and the camera operator on the front porch, pushing on the door and looking more than a little confused. The camera itself was balanced on a tree stump and pointed at the house. At least they were getting some decent footage of this.

Shane pulled on the window’s handle, but it didn’t budge. He sighed – of course it would be stuck – and rapped his knuckles against the glass, pulling back for a moment as it dislodged a thick, murky cloud of dirt that went straight for his eyes and nose. He wafted his hand back and forth in front of his face as he coughed and squeezed his eyes shut, tears building up in his eyes as his body tried to clear them. They streamed down his cheeks as he returned to the window just in time to watch Ryan turn away. Fuck. He knocked again. More dirt, this time heading right for his mouth. Even as he pressed his lips together, the few specks which had been able to sneak in landed on his tongue and had him gagging at their sharp, bitter taste. He once more pulled back and doubled over, one hand on his knees while the other used the edge of his sleeve to scrub at his mouth. “Oh great, now I’ve got ghost tetanus,” he grumbled and returned to the window for the third time. Except this time he didn’t see Ryan or the camera operator.

He saw a face.

He yelped and pulled back, one hand shooting to his mouth to hold back the scream that built in his throat. “Ok, no one tell Ryan about that. This never happened,” he mumbled as he lowered his hand a few moments later, feeling sick and cold and shaky. What was happening? He tried to remember if he’d eaten anything bad in the last 24 hours that could cause him to feel so awful, maybe even cause him to hallucinate because that was clearly what was happening here. There was no other explanation. None that made sense anyway.

The dirt, maybe that was what was doing this. Maybe it wasn’t dirt at all, maybe it was some kind of mould or fungus which caused hallucinations like this one. The ceiling was already black with mould and damp, so that was definitely a possibility. And it was the explanation he was going with.

“Ok you know what?” he said and lifted the camera once more to his face. “I’m not looking at anything else without Ryan. If he thinks I’m going to let him miss out on all of this then he’s mad. Are you kidding me? He’ll love this place!” And to make a point he walked over to the largest chair in the corner of the room and slumped into it, then lifted his feet and dropped them onto the coffee table. It creaked at the sudden weight but didn’t break like he’d been convinced would happen.

He placed the camera on his knees and his hands on the arms of the chair, then threw his head back, closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. His throat felt a little tight, yet another symptom of the dust and dirt and damp in the house. This place was lucky it hadn’t been demolished yet. God knows it needed it – the place was a shithole, all mould and rotten wood and warm spots. Why it hadn’t been torn down yet was honestly beyond Shane.

He was considering this in great detail when a pair of icy hands wound around his wrists and pinned them to the arms of the chair. His eyes flew open and he couldn’t hold back a scream at the bearded face with glowing red eyes looming inches above his own.

It was the man from the photograph, there was no mistaking a face like that. His beard was rattier than it had been in the picture and he was noticeably older, deep wrinkles carved into his skin like scars. And then there were those eyes. They weren’t in the photograph.

Shane struggled beneath the hands, bucking and twisting in every direction in an attempt to throw the man off. But the grip was firm, sharp fingertips digging into his very bones and sending shooting pains up and down his arms. He didn’t stop, though, just gritted his teeth and strained and thrashed, his chest heaving as he gasped like a drowning man. “Get…off…” he spluttered between breaths, but the man just bared his broken teeth in a predator’s grin.

As the struggles to throw the man off failed, Shane’s body flew into autopilot as it fought desperately to save his life. Instead of pushing against his attacker, he dragged his feet from the coffee table to the floor, then braced them there and pushed down hard. The chair upended in one swift move, hitting the wall firstly and then continuing to the floor. His entire body ached as the impact wracked his frame, but more important than the pain was the change in pressure on his wrists. It was barely lighter, but it was enough. He threw himself against one arm of the chair until it rolled onto its side, and suddenly one wrist was free. That was enough for him to swing at the man, his bony fist clenched hard enough that it hurt. He swung…and his fist went right through the man’s face.

It was as if he’d plunged his fist into deep snow. The cold spread from his fingertips through every vein, every nerve it could find, and reached his wrist in seconds. He drew his hand back and stared at it for a moment, everything else in the world fading away and leaving him alone with the deathly chill which was quickly turning to numbness. His fingers were pale and his knuckles pink, but before his very eyes the remaining colour drained and left his hand looking like it belonged in a coffin.

A hand lunged for his and he snapped back to awareness.

“Fuck…off!” he growled and wrenched himself free of the grip with renewed strength, adrenaline pulsing through his veins. He scrambled backwards in an awkward crab crawl, his limbs shaking so violently that he quickly aborted any attempts to get to his feet and focused all of his energy on getting away any way he could. The man – a man, he was just a man, Shane’s brain reminded him even as his numb hand buckled when he tried to put his weight on it – turned slowly, like he had all the time in the world. His eyes, glowing deeply in the semi-darkness of the room, landed on Shane’s huddled form as he struggled to get away, but he didn’t move to follow. Instead he just stared, eyes narrowed like a predator watching its prey. Somehow that was worse because Shane knew that this wasn’t a case of if the man would attack – it was when.

He tensed as the man took a single step forwards, but before anything else could happen, the man faded away before his very eyes and left him all alone.

Shaking all over and unable to take a full breath, Shane fell onto his back and stayed there, his numb hand tucked against his body while the other covered his mouth to muffle his panicked muttering. “What the fuck? What the actual, holy hell, ever living fuck is going on?” he spluttered between gasps. The hand on his mouth slid down to his chest, brushing the camera harnessed there.

The camera!

He fumbled for it with his good hand, struggling to undo it with only one hand which wouldn’t stop shaking. The straps tightened as he pulled on them and he cursed and tried to use his numb hand too, but it was heavy and clumsy and he couldn’t make his fingers move as delicately as he needed to. “Fuck!” he screamed into the open air and brought both hands to rest over his eyes. He knew that he should at least try to move, that he should run now while he was able, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. In fact, he would happily stay here forever, sprawled on this cold, dirty floor, so long as that…thing didn’t come back.

Something heavy thumped against the wooden front door, followed a few seconds later by a muffled voice whose words he was unable to make out. He flinched at the noise and shifted positions, but made no move to get up and investigate. It was safer on the floor, his brain offered even as a rat scurried past him. The noise, that could be anything. It could be the man, it could be something else, something even worse just waiting for him to give it the chance to attack.

No, a louder part of his mind shouted, we're not just going to lie here like a coward, we need to figure out what the fuck just happened before we get out of here. That banging? It's Ryan, he's worried about you. You and your damn screaming, you probably scared the shit out of him. Are you really going to leave him to worry?

“No,” Shane mumbled aloud and struggled to sit up, hugging his numb hand close to himself – it was still pale and difficult to move and he tried his best not to think too hard about why it felt the way he did. The explanation belonged in Ryan’s head, not his own. Now sitting upright, he clambered to his feet and stumbled over to the nearest wall for support as his legs struggled to support his weight. He gritted his teeth through the weakness and searched the room with his eyes. No man, no evidence he’d even been here other than the chair Shane had knocked over in his escape.

Maybe he really was hallucinating.

He sighed heavily, scrubbed his good hand over his face and headed back to the door. He knocked once, tentatively. “Hey-hey Ryan? Can you let me out now please?” he called, his voice cracking and wavering all over the place. The fear was so apparent and he hated that his camera was still on, that it could pick up everything he said and did, that Ryan would use all of this to prove once and for all that ghosts were real and Shane was an idiot for his scepticism. He would never live it down.

The other side of the door was silent. Shane knocked again, harder this time. “Ryan? Come on, the joke’s over just open the -.” Before he could finish there was a sharp flash of pain in his back. He cried out and turned, one hand already raised to defend himself. It did nothing. The same hands which had pinned him to the chair now wound around his neck and dragged him away from the door to the furthest wall, furniture flying from his path in anticipation of his steps. He tried to gasp at the first crash but the hands around his neck were too tight and allowed no air to reach his lungs.

A flash of pain accompanied the crash as he was pushed against the wall, the bearded man grinning and looming over him with hungry eyes. His features were different now; almost blurry as if his very being was falling apart. Before Shane’s eyes, the beard flickered for a moment and revealed instead a large, gaping mouth with razor sharp teeth and a trail of drool sliding down his chin. A second later the beard was back, as if it had never been gone.

Shane clawed at the hands as well as he was able, but the pressure on his neck didn’t waver, even for a moment. He couldn’t breathe, the hands were too tight, he was going to die. His vision was going dull, black spots encroaching on the edges. His chest felt like it was going to explode. He was going to die he was going to die he was going to -.

The front door swung open with a loud bang, and a second later the hands on his neck disappeared. Shane slid down the wall, too weak and exhausted to even hold his own weight. He gasped for air, throwing his head back and his mouth wide. Every breath came with a short wheeze as he tried to take in more air than his lungs could take.

“Shane!”

Hands grasped at him, firstly his knee then his shoulder, then his face. He flinched instinctively and lifted one hand to his face, but it was grabbed in soft hands and pulled down to his lap. “Shane, it’s me. What the hell happened?”

Ryan. Shane lifted tired eyes from the floor and met eyes with Ryan. The other stared at him with wide eyes. fear and worry and anger merging into one in his expression.

“Ryan,” Shane slurred, leaning forwards with difficulty and slumping against Ryan’s shoulder. He buried his face in the rough material of his jacket and took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Yeah, it’s me. What happened? The door locked and we couldn’t get in and you were screaming -. Are you ok?” Ryan’s words were fast like he had too many words and not enough time. It was almost humorous, and Shane would have laughed in any other situation.

Now though, he just moaned and pushed his face harder against Ryan’s shoulder. “Not now. I-I want to get out of here. Please. Please, I want to go,” he begged, the words more desperate than he would have liked.

“Ok, ok we’re going. Come on then. Can you stand?”

“Fucking watch me,” Shane mumbled and struggled to his feet, Ryan ducking under him to act as a crutch. “I just want to go,” he said again.

“We’re going. Fuck, what the hell happened in here? It’s a mess.”

Shane considered telling Ryan everything. He considered explaining all about the photograph and the man and the hands. Ryan would believe him, he thought, there was no doubt about that. But he just…couldn’t.

“Fuck this place,” he whispered as they exited the house and hobbled down the porch steps. The camera operator stood back, arms crossed over his chest and looking concerned but unwilling to step in, and Shane was glad – he didn’t need lots of people fussing over him, he just needed out of here.

As they walked away from the house and back towards the road, he glanced once over his shoulder. In the window, he swore he saw a face – red eyes, a big mouth and teeth like knives. It was a horrifying image, one that any normal person would scream at. But he didn’t – he couldn’t. Instead he was silent, turning away from the house and the monster that inhabited it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
